We are all in thrall to scores, hundreds, thousands perhaps, of mechanisms of whose workings we have no conception. We like to think of ourselves as independent and autonomous, but in fact we are far less independent and autonomous than the villeins of the feudal age. What happens when all the mechanisms and organizations that allow us to lead our lives break down and dissolve?
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
Pages
▼
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Independence and Autonomy
Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple), Blood & smashed glass: